Ice cream trucks originally drove around neighborhoods blasting cheerful melodies from mechanical music boxes simply because the refrigeration units were too loud, and the music masked the obnoxious engine noise.

A closer look

Ice cream trucks originally drove around neighborhoods blasting cheerful melodies from mechanical music boxes simply because the refrigeration units were too loud, and the music masked the obnoxious engine noise. Before modern electric freezers, vendors had to carry heavy blocks of dry ice and run noisy generators just to keep the Popsicles from turning into sticky, lukewarm puddles of sadness. The iconic, twinkling jingles were specifically chosen to psychologically condition small children into sprinting into traffic with a fistful of loose change the second they heard a deformed version of pop goes the weasel. Now it operates as a rolling neighborhood beacon of capitalism, charging panicked parents eight bucks for a severely melted SpongeBob ice cream bar with terrifying, misaligned gumball eyes!